Chinese slave labour and state-sanctioned murder (letter)

by Chris Rule

News Weekly, May 13, 2006

Sir,

Thank you for publishing Dr Shizhong Chen's article, "Camp inmates murdered for their body parts" (News Weekly, April 15, 2006), on the killing of Falun Gong prisoners in the Sujiatun prison-camp, so that their organs can be harvested and sold to hospitals to be used in transplants.

If your readers wish to know more about a practice, which, according to Harry Wu, has been ongoing since 1979, I recommend that they read chapters 15-18 in the book he co-wrote with George Vecsey, Troublemaker: One Man's Crusade Against China's Cruelty (London: Chatto and Windus, 1996).

Harry Wu was himself a political prisoner for many years in the Chinese Laogai, the equivalent of Russia's Gulag.

This book also raises the issue of slave labour, i.e., prisoners being used to produce goods which are then sold to the rest of the world, including the West.